Indian Government Still Can't Access BlackBerry E-Mail

Earlier this year, Indian government officials threatened to ban certain BlackBerry services in the country unless Research in Motion provided a means by which they could monitor the data and messages coming into or going out of the country. But they backed down and postponed the deadline when RIM offered to work with them to find a solution.

But government officials are not satisfied with RIM's efforts to this point. Slash Gear reported Friday that India's Department of Telecoms indicated in an internal memo that it still could not monitor e-mails sent to and from BlackBerry devices in the country. As Slash Gear writer Chris Davies observes, that's not a surprise since RIM's "solution" was to ask the businesses that provide employees with BlackBerries to give the government access to their servers.

According to The Economic Times, RIM maintains that it does not "have the keys" to give the government access to the data. Moreover, the company has told Indian officials that blocking RIM services will not improve the country's security. In fact, it will merely "induce the legion of Internet offenders to migrate to... alternate encryption solutions."

The new deadline for RIM and other providers to hand over decryption solutions to the Indian government is Oct. 31.